Audio Transcription FAQ's
What is audio transcription?
A Professional Transcriber's Best Friend The Foot PedalTranscribing audio is the skill and art of listening to and converting recorded speech from either audio, video, podcast or any other recorded dialogue into a digital text document that you can read, edit, print, share, or copy and paste text for social media updates. A transcript delivered in a Word or basic text document can be added to a video, podcast or webinar. By including the additional text or Word document to your video, podcast or any other audio or visual media, you are providing accessibility to the hearing impaired and giving search engine crawlers more information about your content. This will result in your video or podcast appearing higher in search results because of the additional data.
To increase the accuracy and speed of the speech-to-text process from recorded speech manually, a transcriber can use a foot pedal. See the picture to the left of the exact foot pedal used by Virtuadmin for audio transcription projects. Using hotkeys as an alternative can be very time-consuming for this type of transcription technique. Using a foot pedal you control the playback of audio with your foot to play, rewind and replay. Therefore, a professional touch typist does not have to take their hands from the keyboard, they keep their fingers on the home keys, increasing the typing speed conversion of recorded audio speech into an accurate transcript.
How long does audio transcription take?
Audio TranscriptionThere are many factors to take into consideration when determining how long the audio transcription can take to complete. The important following factors should and need to be taken into consideration:
- What is the audio quality like?
- Is there any background noise? It could have been recorded in a public place (not recommended)
- Is there static in the recording? (Suggested a replay after recording to assess this)
- How many speakers are in the audio?
- Do the speaker/s have a non-native English accent?
- Is the transcription to be intelligent verbatim (um's, ah's and repetitive words or sayings like, 'you know' and 'sort of' or strict verbatim, where these are left in the transcript, every little sound is transcribed).
All of these elements need to be taken into consideration when trying to estimate the length of time for a professional transcriber with a touch typing speed of 80 words per minute to turn your recorded speech into a comprehensive word-for-word account of your important content within the audio.
How is audio transcription charged?
In the United Kingdom, audio transcription is charged by the audio minute, and not the time it takes to convert recorded speech into text. The industry guideline is that it takes approximately 4-6 hours for a professional transcriber to manually listen and type ONE HOUR of recorded audio.
For audio transcription services here at Virtuadmin our rate starts at 60p per audio minute for a clear single-speaker audio.
If you have any other questions regarding audio transcription, please do not hesitate to email me at transcription.service.vts@gmail and I would be happy to answer any questions not answered in this post.